Griffin Says NASA Needs $3 Billion More Annually; Expresses ‘Great Concern’ Over Gap In U.S. Manned Spaceflight Capability
NASA Now On ‘Proper Path’ — Griffin; New Administrator Will Need Direct Meetings With Obama To Avoid Meddling ‘Mattress Mice’
NASA requires President Obama to reaffirm explicitly that the space agency must remain on course to exploring the cosmos beyond low Earth orbit, former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin stated.
He and the current Acting Administrator Chris Scolese wrote separately that the space agency needs to avoid volatile, roller-coaster peaks and valleys in funding, support and direction for the overarching goals of the largest space agency.
Griffin referred to the ongoing vision for space exploration that was enunciated by then-President Bush in his 2004 State of the Union address, a strategic plan that Griffin said must be reaffirmed by each new president entering the White House, including Obama.
Space programs aren’t brief tasks easily and quickly finished, but rather are years-long or decades-long programs of vast complexity and planning that require steadfast support and stability, Griffin wrote.
“We need to stay the course on [space] exploration strategy,” he wrote.
Similarly, Scolese cited an urgent requirement for the United States to persevere steadfastly with a “commitment to a continued human presence in space including a path out of low Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars.”
As Obama works on his federal budget proposal going to Congress next month, NASA needs at least about $3 billion a year more than its current funding levels, increased funds sorely required to support “research and technology development efforts, and robustly execute those programs with which we are already charged,” Griffin observed. “This would be without substantial additions to programmatic content. If new programmatic content is desired, then more money is necessary.”
He and Scolese wrote separate assessments of NASA, its work and direction, that were incorporated into a larger annual report by a panel charged with assessing the agency and its accomplishments.
Scolese, too, stressed the critical need for stability in direction and support for multi-billion, multi-decade, highly technical programs that the space agency must execute.
NASA, in executing its programs, must have “as much stability as possible,” Scolese advised. “We have good management and policies in place that are being executed and are beginning to bear fruit. Too much change could easily halt the momentum we have and cause us to churn while we figure out where to go, and what to do next.”
One can’t on a whim change or substitute strategic long-range goals in programs that will run on a timeline going into the 2030s.
“Direction to go to Mars is a decadal timeframe, not a 3-4 year endeavor,” Scolese stressed. “This need for stability certainly includes all programs that are … (nearing launch readiness) during the next 6 months.”
Griffin expressed concern that the strategic vision for NASA could be discarded at some point:
“The newly established direction for our civil space program is still quite vulnerable, despite what I consider extraordinary bipartisan support in Congress in the form of two successive NASA Authorization Acts, in 2005 and again in 2008.”
This is not an area where the greatest goals of the agency can be changed on some caprice or whim, veering from one objective to another, Griffin warned.
“It is simply not possible to obtain any significant value from investments in NASA if the purpose of these investments is altered at the whim of every successive presidential administration,” Griffin cautioned.
“It is imperative that progress continue on the exploration strategy without a new round of soul-searching debate or another extensive study,” he cautioned. “Any delay will only serve to increase the gap in U.S. human spaceflight capabilities, and further erode our leadership in human space exploration. We have begun our journey along a multi-decade path, and the focus needs to be on sustaining that journey.”
An engineer by trade, Griffin displayed his signature trait of blunt outspokenness, proving again that he deals in facts, rather than attempting to be an office politician or diplomat.
He noted that often, major changes may be foisted on NASA by functionaries and bureaucrats, rather than being personal policy decisions of the president.
In fact, when NASA abruptly is pushed away from one goal into a new direction, “This usually occurs without significant direct involvement by the president,” he wrote.
Policy may be changed or altered by relatively junior, and in any case non-accountable, staff, Griffin observed. And this just doesn’t work, given the immensely long timeframes of space efforts. “Space policy must be viewed on decadal timescales, not through the lens of presidential or Congressional electoral cycles, if it is to be of value,” Griffin wrote.
The problem lies not with presidents themselves, but rather with underlings who decide to make major space-policy shifts and decisions without discussions with the president, and in some cases running counter to stated presidential policies.
‘Mattress Mice’
The space agency requires “periodic direct involvement by the president himself with the NASA Administrator, who in fact reports to the president, to minimize and control attempts by, and the deleterious effects of, numerous White House … staff [members] imposing their personal agendas on the conduct of NASA affairs,” Griffin wrote.
“The NASA Administrator owes it to the president to manage NASA in accordance with stated presidential policy and Congressional authorization and appropriations law. The president owes it to his NASA Administrator to ensure that other voices and other agendas are not prevailing over that of the president, merely because they can.
“The ‘mattress mice’ — many of them career civil servants, not political appointees — who serve on the [Executive Office of the President] staff are always there. If the president is not personally involved, individual staff agendas will prevail over stated presidential policy. In an environment where the Administrator does not have reasonably regular direct access to the president, this will absolutely occur.”
Griffin said a recent proposal to reestablish a White House space panel won’t cure this problem.
“The oft-touted re-establishment of a so-called ‘National Space Council’ — another staff office — is not a solution, it is an additional problem,” Griffin warned.
His bluntness continued as he assailed the reality that some NASA posts are filled based on politics rather than on the qualifications of people to lead something as critical as a space, science and aeronautics program.
Don’t Hire Hacks
The agency should be able to have free rein in hiring, with an “insistence on top-level technical and program management talent, as demonstrated by a track record of performance in the space business, as a precondition for holding any significant management position at NASA,” Griffin stated. “Far too often in the past, numerous significant leadership positions at NASA have been fulfilled by people whose primary qualification for the job was their relationship with those in control of the selection process. Far too often in the past, such top-level jobs have been, literally, the very first job these individuals had ever held in the space business. We spent almost 15 years conducting an experiment at NASA, an experiment whose purpose seemed to be to demonstrate that it was possible for people without relevant domain expertise to manage a highly technical agency. It did not work. We should not repeat it.”
To be sure, Griffin expressed regret that of all the people he hired, a few didn’t work out well, saying the blame for that rests on his shoulders.
On the other hand, Griffin said NASA is blessed with not a few but myriad immensely talented and competent people, naming them individually:
“In approximate order of precedence, [they are] Bill Gerstenmaier, Chris Scolese, Doug Cooke, Mike Coats, Bob Cabana, Dave King, Steve Cook, John Shannon, Jeff Hanley, Mike Suffredini, Mike Hawes, and Ron Spoehel,” Griffin wrote. “If requested to do so, I could easily name another dozen, and they would be just as good and almost as crucial to retain as the first dozen.”
Scolese, too, said the top ranks of NASA are filled with people who are, to a person, contributing solidly to advancing the agency and its mission.
Scolese Opposes Shuttle Flights
Scolese also opposed, strongly, any move to extend space shuttle flights beyond their retirement deadline by October next year that President Bush mandated.
Bush’s decision means that from shuttles retiring in 2010, until the 2015 first manned flight of the next-generation replacement U.S. spaceship system, Orion-Ares, the only nation that ever placed men on the moon won’t even be able to get one astronaut into low Earth orbit.
For half a decade, that will leave NASA having to buy taxi service from the Russians, transporting American astronauts to the International Space Station aboard Soyuz spaceships.
Some in Congress recoil at this prospect, especially given rocky Russian-U.S. relationships that have included top Russian officials threatening to use missiles to obliterate the planned U.S. European Missile Defense system if it is built. Those lawmakers have suggested using money that will be paid to Russia for those Soyuz flights to instead keeping flying U.S. space shuttles. That also would help to delay the time when thousands of space workers in Central Florida and other areas are dumped into unemployment lines at the end of the space shuttle program.
But many at NASA fear that extending shuttle flights will devour even more money, causing delays in developing Orion-Ares.
Scolese likewise views any space shuttles extension with concern.
“I see this [move to extend space shuttle flights into 2011] as the single biggest threat to the U.S. future in space,” Scolese wrote. “There are people availability implications, spare parts availability etc. that have safety implications. There will never be a painless time to end the shuttle and extending it now won’t make it any easier to end it gracefully
later. To cast off my Pollyanna persona for a minute, extending the shuttle now makes it likely that we will end the shuttle only when we have another serious accident or at best, a close call that wakes everyone up. Frankly, a much better strategy is to go to a real” strategy of further expanding and improving the International Space Station “and accelerate the capability as much as possible,” Scolese wrote.
To read Griffin’s and Scolese’s comments in entirety, please go to http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/oer/asap/documents/2008_ASAP_Annual_Report.pdf on the Web.